I Threw My Lantern
Today is Fat Tuesday, tomorrow is Lent, a season of abstinence. I was not raised Catholic, but I understand the logic of deprivation as preparation for newness, the emergence of new life. The truth is ancient, predating the Christian era. That’s the dynamic of life, of reality, of Nature, and the arc of human experience.
The Olympics televised, are a stunning example of years of discipline, struggle, focused into a few minutes of competition. The athlete competes primarily with him or herself, and with the elements of steel and ice, a snow covered half pipe, or a steep downhill shalom run. The result is the ecstasy of fulfillment that is beyond words. Darkness, years of discipline, training–and then a flash of blinding light! Every participant in the Olympics is a bona-fide winner in my opinion.
So there is triumph, celebration, the joy-of-overcoming in the face of the social and political darkness that is gathering around us here in the States. The world is vast, and we will overcome. I believe it.
Today I offer a bit of verse with apologies to Nietzsche, The Parable of the Madman, The Gay Science
I Threw My Lantern
Is there any up and down left?
Has it not become colder?
And we have killed him.
How shall we console ourselves?
What festivals of atonement,
What sacred games,
Shall we need to invent?
Must we not ourselves become gods?I threw my lantern
To the ground.
It broke and went out.
The deed is nigh,
No longer distant
As the stars,
My time has come.Gods too decompose…..
